Should I Stay or Should I Go? Safety is Relative

Scrumptious Seafood BBQ on Jimbaran Beach, Bali

If I go there will be trouble / An’ if I stay it will be double / So come on and let me know / Should I stay or should I go? Some songs, even The Clash’s 1981 hit, have that uncanny ability to key into issues that affect our lives and often cause us to transfer the message of the song to other matters that are top-of-mind. And in this case, it’s ‘travel’. Travellers, who are considering a new destination experience, seem to have a hierarchy of questions that must be satisfied, assuming that the destination conforms to their budget.“What are the washrooms like?”“Will I be able to eat the food?”“What is the price of a beer?”“Is it safe?”

The psychology behind the order of the questions is that if the first three are answered satisfactorily, then the traveller has somewhat committed him/herself to exploring the real possibility of going to that destination. The fourth determining factor relates to safety, and in this day and age, how many times have we been asked by clients, “Is it safe to go to….”

Should I stay?

In the movie Marathon Man, Dr. Christian Szell, the character played by Sir Lawrence Olivier, made the question “Is it safe” famous (and haunting), but he also made it clear that neither a ‘YES’ (it is safe) or a ‘NO’ (it is not safe), was an acceptable answer. So how do you respond to this question in the context of travel?.

The basic level is “Exercise Normal Security Precautions”. The safety of the destination becomes relative to the preparedness of the traveller, which is either something they have done on their own or, with the learned guidance and coaching from a travel professional. Preparation can include pre-travel research, reading guide books, checking travel advice from government and other sources (eg e-travel advisories, the Weissmann Reports and so on), speaking to other travellers, checking out online traveller reviews, and paying (cautious) attention to reports from the media.

As far as the media is concerned you often have to dissect their need for sound bites and sensationalism from the reality of the situation. And unfortunately, the media does not always do justice to travellers or to the country.

Recently, when the problems in Kingston, Jamaica began to surface, a chief CNN correspondent introduced the topic by suggesting that all Jamaica-bound vacationers should be seriously concerned about the violence in Kingston. In the travel industry, we know that most vacationers visit the areas from Negril over to Mo’ Bay, Ocho Rios and on to Port Antonio.

We also know that travellers (and even some travel consultants) don’t look at maps and therefore by painting the entire country as unsafe, a great injustice is being done to vacationers and to the country itself.

If you want an example closer to home, think of the SARS ‘crisis”, when those afflicted were for the most part, restricted to one hospital in Scarborough, Ontario, yet Canada as a whole was considered by some to be unsafe. I was in Tunisia at the time and when an Australian on my group heard that I was from Toronto, she got up and moved away from me. (It was either an anti-SARS reaction or that new aftershave I got at duty free.)

And even Foreign Affairs reports can fall under scrutiny from time to time when disturbances in one part (or parts) of a country (i.e. Thailand, Mexico, Indonesia, to name a few) result in a country-wide alert.

Did travellers still visit Thailand? Yes. For the most part they avoided Bangkok and travelled north to Chiang Mai and Issan, or South to the beaches and islands.

Do people still travel to Bali? Absolutely.

Safety is relative.

If you ask the right questions, you will find that clients either have their own comfort criteria based on past experience or they are looking to a travel professional to impart this confidence to them.

Again, we are talking about the basic travel warning here. We are not talking about travel to Afghanistan or Iraq or Sierra Leone.

• Do your clients practice street-proofing themselves?

• Do they know how to walk down a sidewalk when there is no one around?

• Do they keep minimum cash with them (with the rest locked in the hotel safe)?

• Do they resist the urge to wear bling on the streets (displays of wealth)?

• Do they know how to recognize a travel scam before it affects them?

• Do they have a sense of what is safe to eat and drink ?

• Do they have the travel common sense to avoid risky activities that sound like fun on vacation, even though they have never participated in that activity before (i.e. riding a motor bike, or jumping from balcony to balcony to visit friends in different units of the motel)

The question of safety really is impossible to answer without the disclaimer that “if you take normal precautions, you will be fine”. But you still need to go the extra distance to define what you mean by “taking normal precautions”, and some of the ideas, above, may help you in arriving at a definition.

Should I go?

If your client determines that the destination is relatively safe and that they can travel there, then they may ask you if they “should travel there”.

This question is usually induced by concerns over government policy or human rights issues. Of course the ultimate decision of the traveller to travel, is theirs and theirs alone.

Should you travel to North Korea now that group tours are available? Will it help the people of North Korea? I am not totally sure of the answer but if you travel to Pyongyang and other areas, it will certainly open your eyes to what is happening with the people. So if you ask me “should I go”, the answer is Yes, without any hesitation.

On more than one occasion, the Dalai Lama has been asked if he supports the idea of travellers visiting Tibet.

The question is usually based on the concern that conscientious travellers could be helping to legitimize government policies about which they have strong feelings. The Dalai Lama (and I am paraphrasing here) responded that it was important for travellers to witness the world for themselves; to gain first hand understanding by travelling, seeing, speaking, and then relating their experiences to others. As a responsible citizen of the world, you have to see for yourself, if you have the means to do so, and then draw your own conclusions. And of course this reasoning pertains to just about every ‘questionable’ (i.e. should I go) destination on our planet.

In most cases, the “should I go” destinations that I have personally explored have resulted in some of the warmest personal moments of my travels, in terms of speaking with a family, sharing a drink in a café or a laugh in a restaurant, or chatting up a bicycle rickshaw driver and learning about his life and his dreams. There is no great revelation in saying that by talking to people—even if it is simply by body language (or smiling)—you can learn a lot and come away with very special experiences.

And when it comes down to it, your exploration of a destination almost always benefits you as well as the people of the country. It can bring in needed income in Zimbabwe or Nepal or educate the people about what is happening outside of their own country, in Myanmar, or confirm that people outside of the country share their concerns, as in Tibet, or that there is hope down the road that one day the government restrictions and the media will change their tune, and tourists will once again arrive and bring business, as in Bali.

Should I stay or should I go?

Many years ago I told someone that I was going to Kenya for my holiday. He said that with the problems in the country at that time I should definitely reconsider…“after all, Steve, you only live once”.

Yes, you only live once, and this is how I and many other travellers choose to live—by exploring as much of the planet as possible and seeing and learning about the people with whom we share it.